The present invention relates to automatic clothes washers and more particularly to a slit valve for use in an automatic vertical axis clothes washer.
Attempts have been made to provide an automatic clothes washer which provides comparable or superior wash results to present commercially available automatic washers, yet which uses less energy and water. For example, such devices and wash processes are shown and described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,784,666 and 4,987,627, both assigned to the assignee of the present application, and incorporated herein by reference.
The basis of these systems stems from the optimization of the equation where wash performance is defined by a balance between the chemical (the detergent efficiency and water quality), thermal (energy to heat water), and mechanical (application of fluid flow through--fluid flow over--fluid impact--fabric flexing) energy inputs to the system. Any reduction in one or more energy forms requires an increase in one or more of the other energy inputs to produce comparable levels of wash performance.
Significantly greater savings in water usage and energy usage than is achieved by heretofore disclosed wash systems and methods would be highly desirable.